Here a roundup of the latest tips and tricks from MacOS X Hints:

- New Twitter.app for Mac -- Bugs and Fixes
- Using a MacBook Pro as firewire pass-through
- Add image or text on top of a one-page PDF
- Use Dropbox for a Mobile Virtual Printer
- How to disable sync warnings in iTunes
- Force RSS feeds to refresh using pubsub
- Use a RAMdisk to manage downloads
- iCal: Duplicate/Move items between calendars
- Mail.app's proxy icon: Link to a specific message
- 10.6: Switch remote iChat shared screen back without disrupting the user
- 10.6: Limitations of TextWrangler or BBEdit from the Mac App Store
- 10.6: Re-enable missing fonts
- Save Timestamped Mail Attachments with Rules and Applescript
- Secure videos on iPhone
- Use GParted LiveCD to recover missing partition
- Facebook chat with faces using Adium
- How to delete last blank page in Word
- Swap Opt and Command Keys on a Logitech K800
- Change scrubbing speed and resolution
- Safari cannot save some web pages
- Mass deploying Adobe Flash Player updates
- Add .mobi files into Amazon Kindle OS X App
- Backup the iPhoto Library to DVD's with tar
- View Safari page source in an external editor
- 10.6: Keyboard shortcut for switching between input sources
- 10.6: Reset the Printing System
- Removing periods from mailbox names
- Cannot empty trash because item is in use
- Free Up That Disk Space - iPhoto
- Copy public IP address to clipboard via keyboard shortcut
- Restore subpixel antialiasing to Apple's websites
- How to share TrueCrypted drive for OSX and Linux with write perms
- Select Tabs of Unresponsive Ribbon in Office 2011
- Jump to folders quickly in Open/Save dialog boxes
- Shortcut to Home Folder
- 10.6: Automate Internet Sharing revisited



New Twitter.app for Mac -- Bugs and Fixes

Some users are finding that the new Twitter application (available through the Mac App Store) for the Mac is missing some features.

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Using a MacBook Pro as firewire pass-through

Their are many options today for you to attach your trusty old FireWire 400 goodies to your shiny new MacPro (that doesn't include FW400 anymore). 6 pin to 9 pin adapters, cables or just buy new gear...except you didn't plan that far ahead and now your in the middle of a critical project with one file stuck on a trusty FW400 drive and no way to plug it into your new Mac. Sure you could load it onto that old MacBook Pro you got, but the HD is too full to for the 65GB video file.

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Add image or text on top of a one-page PDF

This hint shows how to load a one-page PDF into a word processor and place an image or text over the PDF.

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Use Dropbox for a Mobile Virtual Printer

I have an app installed on my iPod touch called ACTPrinter so I can 'print' web pages/documents (sends a PDF) to the device so I have it 'to go'. I was just wondering if I could get it for my Android phone (no) or if there was an app that would be compatible with both.

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How to disable sync warnings in iTunes

Synchronizing iPhone with iTunes was always a pain for me because of the annoying warnings. Those dialogs pop up a message warning me that Contacts or Calendars, etc. will be changed on the iPhone and asks for permission. I'm a longtime iPhone/iTunes user so I know what I want to do and don't need to be warned again. The way to turn these off is very simple.

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Force RSS feeds to refresh using pubsub

I've had problems with RSS feeds not updating correctly in Safari. So, I started looking for a way to manually refresh the feeds which, in turn, led to experimenting with the pubsub command (in the Terminal application).

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Use a RAMdisk to manage downloads

My Downloads folder was getting swamped with hundreds of PDF datasheets, although this tip applies to any downloads (such as images) where you may not want to keep all of the files.

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iCal: Duplicate/Move items between calendars

iCal will normally allow you to export a calendar, and then import it into the calendar of your choice. However, if your desired calendar is on an Exchange server AND it's not your primary calendar on that account, iCal lists those calendars as grayed out.

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Mail.app's proxy icon: Link to a specific message

There are quite a few things you can do with the little proxy icon in the window title bar, as mentioned in this hint.

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10.6: Switch remote iChat shared screen back without disrupting the user

Good news for folks who remote control screens over the internet with iChat. Now you can use the plugging in of a USB flash drive, or any other mountable device, to automatically signal your Mac to switch from the remote computer screen back to yours. You no longer have to rudely interrupt the user at the other end by moving their cursor out from under them. And you don't have to communicate with them in advance to warn them about it. They remain blissfully unaware of your leaving and returning.

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10.6: Limitations of TextWrangler or BBEdit from the Mac App Store

You should know before installing Bare Bones's TextWrangler or BBEdit from the Mac App Store that the version there has the command line tools and authenticated saves removed in order to comply with Apple's terms of use. See their FAQ.

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10.6: Re-enable missing fonts

After upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6.2 (Snow Leopard) from Mac OS X 10.5.8 (Leopard), I found that the Tahoma font was not displayed by any Office 2004 or Office 2008 application.

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Save Timestamped Mail Attachments with Rules and Applescript

Recently I was working on a web application that required some data from another antiquated system. As it turned out, a text file with a generic name, sent as an email attached, was the only way to get this data. Not wanting my app to require any manual intervention, I set out to figure out how to automatically save these attachments into a specific folder with a timestamp in the file name. This would allow a PHP script to easily access these files as well as verify the data is current.

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Secure videos on iPhone

Do you like to carry your collection with you but don't want anyone rummaging through it?

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Use GParted LiveCD to recover missing partition

My Macintosh HD startup disk disappeared today, but I was able to use GParted to delete a small partition from the drive and the missing disk reappeared.

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Facebook chat with faces using Adium

What if you could display your online chat friends as just their faces? Why do you need all that extra clutter on your desktop? Furthermore, why do you even need to use Facebook Chat in your web browser when you can do all this using Adium?

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How to delete last blank page in Word

Sometimes Word documents contain a last blank page that seems impossible to delete.

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Swap Opt and Command Keys on a Logitech K800

This hint details how you can swap the Command and Option keys on the Logitech K800 lighted wireless keyboard. This hint is necessary because the K800 does not respect the Modifier Keys settings under System Preferences & Keyboard.

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Change scrubbing speed and resolution

The clickwheel is gone and won't ever come back.

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Safari cannot save some web pages

Safari cannot save some web pages like
Amazon.com: Space 1999 - 30th Anniversary Edition Megaset (17DVD): Martin Landau, Barbara Bain, Barry Morse, Nick Tate, Catherine Schell, Zienia Merton, Prentis Hancock, Clifton Jones, Anton Phillips, Kevin Connor, Val Guest, Bob Brooks (III), Robert Lynn (II): Movies & TV and some others.

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Mass deploying Adobe Flash Player updates

If you are in a situation where you have a large number of Macintosh computers at your work and you need to push out a Flash update to all your clients it can be tedious. The Adobe installers are filled with fluff and GUI options that do not make it easy to mass deploy.

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Add .mobi files into Amazon Kindle OS X App

The Amazon Kindle Mac application does not easily allow for importing *.mobi files not purchased through Amazon.

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Backup the iPhoto Library to DVD's with tar

A recent Macworld article on backups stated:

'Regrettably, iPhoto no longer offers an option to back up your iPhoto library to optical media. Rather, you can burn only images to the disc rather than the library itself and you can't burn to multiple discs if the selected number of photos won't fit on a single CD or DVD.'

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View Safari page source in an external editor

To complement robg's recent hint, here's an AppleScript to view Safari's page source in Emacs.app.

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10.6: Keyboard shortcut for switching between input sources

If you type in more than one language, and you are constantly switching back and forth between these languages it can get a bit tedious to use the mouse. Even though Mac OS X comes with a shortcut, which is Command+Space and Command+Option+Space, it is disabled by default because Spotlight shares these shortcuts. So here is how you enable it.

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10.6: Reset the Printing System

I encountered a problem recently where Word would not save, and Photoshop and other applications would not launch after an upgrade to 10.6 from 10.4.

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Removing periods from mailbox names

I've been migrating mail messages to a new Mac mail server from a Windows-hosted one.

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Cannot empty trash because item is in use

Sometimes it is not possible to empty the trash because an item is in use. There are many possible causes for this; here is one thing to try to eliminate the error.

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Free Up That Disk Space - iPhoto

For those of you who take a ton of pictures and use iPhoto, you've probably at some point or another run out of space on your hard drive. Especially if you shoot in Camera RAW. Well all those pictures that you've deleted, you know, the ones that didn't quite 'turn out' aren't really deleted and still exist on your hard drive.

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Copy public IP address to clipboard via keyboard shortcut

A friend asked me for a way to put his current public IP address (which changes regularly, it seems) on the clipboard via a keyboard shortcut, and to alert him as to what value was copied. Using a combination of a shell script, Butler, and Growl (specifically, the shell command growlnotify), I was able to put together a solution for him. Note that Butler (disclaimer: I'm part of Many Tricks, Butler's developers) can be replaced by any program that lets you execute shell scripts via a hot key. You could also put the shell script in Automator, and go that route ... but I digress.

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Restore subpixel antialiasing to Apple's websites

Somebody at Apple seems to be on a crusade against LCD subpixel antialiased font rendering. Recent versions of WebKit, included with Safari 5, introduced an unfortunate CSS option for web developers to override your preferred choice of text smoothing.

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How to share TrueCrypted drive for OSX and Linux with write perms

Let's say you have hard drive encrypted with TrueCrypt with HFS+ filesystem on it and you want to use it under both: OSX and Linux. That's no problem because TrueCrypt works great on both systems. But when you want to WRITE to such drive under Linux you'll get an error. That's because Linux do not support writing to journaled HFS. This is how to remove journaling from such drive.

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Select Tabs of Unresponsive Ribbon in Office 2011

One of the most desirable features in Office 2011 is the customizability of the new ribbon and toolbars. I disabled the toolbar because its functionality was substantially duplicated within the ribbon.

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Jump to folders quickly in Open/Save dialog boxes

I'm often working on files in a directory that I have open in Finder and navigate to this folder from an Open/Save dialog box.

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Shortcut to Home Folder

I accidentally found a new shortcut to the Home folder in Snow Leopard.

In Finder, I have always used Command+Up arrow to go up one level to go through my subdirectories very quickly, especially when developing and am traversing the same directory sections.

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10.6: Automate Internet Sharing revisited

This hint provides AppleScript code that will turn Internet Sharing on or off automatically. Internet Sharing is useful for turning your Mac into a Wi-Fi hotspot for connecting iPads or other Wi-Fi devices that cannot connect to the Internet via Ethernet or cellular data networks.

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